Insect species diversity and abundance in oak forest of Kumaun Himalaya, Uttarakhand

Abstract

Species richness, abundance and biomass, species diversity, secondary production and herbivore of insects in an oak forest of Kumaun Himalayan were studied during August 2013 to July 2015. A total of 90 species of insects belonging to 32 families under 8 orders were collected. Herbivores were dominant in terms of number of species (68.4%) and number of individuals (76.9%). Shannon-Wiener diversity index H’ varied from 0 to 0.3 and Evenness (E) varied from 0 to 0.04. Mean secondary net production of herbivores was 0.638 KJ m2 yr-1. As a proportion of net primary production, secondary production was only 0.033% suggesting that herbivores were not food limited of the 90 species of insects collected.